No Use Crying over Spilled Paint
by htoria
Summary: Festive oneshot! Hood-Mills family on Christmas morning - what happens when Roland inadvertently almost ruins the day?


_A/N: Just a little festive oneshot to get folks in the mood. Originally posted on day 12 of the AMAZING Outlaw Queen advent calendar - seriously, if you haven't checked it out yet you should. You'll find it on tumblr & twitter under onceuponanadvent _

There are many things Henry Mills can say he loves about the holidays.

Decorating the tree, ice skating in the park, when the weather drops so cold the tops of his ears start to hurt, and yes, obviously, the presents - he definitely hasn't grown up in a mansion wanting for anything. He loves it all. But this year… this year feels kind of different.

Sure, the night's have gotten longer, the streets are glittered with frost, every house is ablaze with twinkling lights and Granny is doing her usual routine of adding cinnamon in _everyone's_ cocoa (not just his and his mom's). Everything is exactly the same as it has been every year since he was little, except, somehow… not.

This year he has more family around him than he knows what to do with.

It's always just been him and his mother. Regina, for the first ten years of his life, Emma, for that alien year they spent inside a dream, and now… well. Now they're all together. Finally.

There'd been a row at first, when it came to what he would be doing this year. One that started with an offhand comment from his second mother that she'd be sure to bring Henry over to Mifflin Street in time for dinner, and the idea that he would wake up anywhere other than his house on said street went down like a lead balloon. Regina had pitched a fit, Emma had dug her heels in, and Henry had sighed once again that sometimes he really is smarter than both his mom's put together.

He can't say he's regretting his suggestion, now the day has finally arrived, but somehow the notion of the _entire family_ having dinner in one place seemed a lot less stressful when it was months away. Still, it had ebbed the arguing at the time, and he'd roll with that for as long as he could. He would spend Christmas Eve night with mom number one, and then mom number two and the rest of the guys along with them would come over for dinner that afternoon, and he'd go home with them that night.

Simple.

Or, at least, it sounds it.

Not that he's complaining. It's a pretty sweet dilemma to have, having too many family members. One that his younger self would only dream of, back when he and his mom weren't getting along, when the curse was still veiling the town and Christmas day would largely be spent in silence. If someone had told him then he'd one day be spending the holidays with two moms, three grandparents, an uncle, and a whole heap of extended family along with them, you'd have knocked him down with a feather.

Though… he'd likely never have believed all that family would be fairytale characters too…

His family would look so weird to anyone who didn't know them.

Or at least it would do tomorrow. When the whole lot of them are taking up his mother's dining room.

Right now he imagines if anyone were spying like a fly on the wall, they'd look like any traditional family on Christmas Eve. Two little kids tucked up in bed, a mom and a dad relaxing on the couch and him, the eldest kid, with his head stuffed in a comic keeping everything crossed he's not gonna get sent up to bed any time soon.

Maybe if he just keeps his head down…

"Henry."

Damn.

"Don't think I'm not watching that clock," his mom says without looking up.

"Mom," Henry scoffs, "It's barely 9:30."

Her eyes find him then, a knowing look over the top of her glasses, attention suddenly on him and not on the budget reports they'd tried to stop her from going through earlier, but then some things never will change. Like how much she works even when she shouldn't be.

She watches him for a second wearing that look she wears when she's trying to decide whether to go with her head or her heart, and then sighs with a slight purse of her lips. "You've got until ten. Then i'm booting you up to bed whether you like it or not," and back to her reports she goes.

He watches her snuggle down on the couch a little, Robin dozing quietly behind her, and they sit like that a lot he's noticed. When Roland's in bed and the baby's had her last bottle. Curl up on the couch in front of the fire, each doing their owns things (his mom usually working, Robin usually reading), but they'll sit together regardless. It's not something he ever thought he'd see.

His mother so content, so at ease with the world around her. Least of all with the life she lives now - he can't imagine it's easy to juggle running a town and raising three children, and yet she seems to do it so _easily._ Sometimes he thinks she should be in one of his comics.

Supermom Mills.

"I'd jump at the chance to get to bed as soon as possible if I were you mate," Robin says, eyes still closed, head lulled back on the couch and his feet stretched out resting on the coffee table in front of him - something Henry knows his mom hates. Maybe Christmas has mellowed her out more than he realised.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mmm. I'm pretty sure Roland won't be held responsible for waking us all at the crack of dawn tomorrow. You might want to get as much shut eye as you can."

Henry laughs, says, "can you blame him? He'd never heard of Santa or Christmas before you guys got here."

"Yes, something he's reminded me of daily since he was told the whole tale. He's convinced this Christmas fellow will be making up for all the lost years in extra presents."

"Don't remind me," his mother grimaces, suddenly looking up and joining in the conversation. "I hope he likes his things."

"He will," Robin answers, leaning over to kiss her hair.

"Do you guys want me to help you bring the presents down from the attic?" Henry asks after a moment, and Regina's head snaps around.

"How do you know that's where I keep the presents?"

"Mom, please. Give me a little credit."

She tuts as Robin laughs, and that is how the rest of the night is spent. Quietly bringing boxes and boxes of presents down from the attic (a whole hoard of them for everyone but himself, and maybe he ought to be the one giving his mom credit… clearly she's found somewhere more obscure to hide _his_ presents).

He manages to stay up just past ten, until all the presents are distributed evenly (he's even spotted a couple for Mary Margaret under the tree) before his mom orders him to bed, and as he settles down for the night, Henry feels the excitement of Christmas flooding his veins.

For the first time in his life, tomorrow he will spend the day with every single family member he has, and that idea is the best in the world to fall asleep to.

-§-

It's still dark out when he wakes. Well… is woken. By little fingers that grip his arm and shake him (as much as they can - the person said little fingers belong to isn't strong enough to jostle him too vigorously) and a continuous whisper of his name.

"Henry… Henry… _Henry."_

It's Roland.

He screws his eyes tighter, as if him staying still and not responding will make his little brother (because he thinks of him like that now) give up and go back to bed, but, ah. No such luck.

" _Henry!"_ And it's the tone of his voice that finally makes Henry open his eyes and roll over.

"Roland," he mumbles. "What is it?"

He blinks once or twice, not hiding the scowl on his face until he makes out something in Roland's expression he wouldn't have thought possible on Christmas morning. Panic.

"Henry I did a bad thing," he tells him, and the heavy sleep sitting in his eyelids disappears. Henry sits up, leans over to turn on the lamp by his bed - winces at the sudden brightness in the room - and looks back at his kid brother. There are tears in his eyes, wet stains on his cheeks, bottom lip quivering in a way that makes Henry share in his panic even though he has no idea what's happened.

Or why he's come to him and not Robin or his mom.

"What's happened?"

"I w-woke up and wanted t-to see if Santa had b-been," he whispers. "And Daddy and Regina said I shouldn't wake them up if the baby wasn't a-awake yet, and she wasn't so I thought I'd go and just open _my_ pr-presents."

Henry sighs, throws back his covers and swings his legs over the side of the bed. "How many have you opened?"

"Just one," he sniffs.

Oh. Well.. not too much damage done at all then, Henry thinks to himself. He stands, throws on his dressing gown before holding out his hand to Roland and telling him, "Come on, let's go and re-wrap it before mom wakes up. But you've gotta be real quiet, okay?"

"But Henry," Roland starts, pulling on his hand as though he can't go back outside. "I opened it and I spilled it and now it's all messy! Daddy's gonna tell Santa to take my presents back!"

And then he's crying, and at the words _I spilled it_ , the panic Roland was emitting not moments before is finally seeping into Henry's veins. Whatever he's opened, he's made some sort of mess.

In his mother's showhome of a living room.

He stands there for a second, lets his mind conjure up as many absolutely irreversible, Christmas-day-ruining scenarios that Roland could have possibly gotten himself into before taking a deep breath and telling the kid it's okay.

"Let's just go and see how we can fix it," he says calmly, giving Roland another tug and telling him to be extra quiet because they don't want to be waking their sister.

He isn't exactly sure what he expected to find when he eventually turns into the front room. Something on fire… Presents all askew… Carnage, basically. Except nothing of the sort greets him.

The house feels cold down here, away from his warm cosy bed. Eerily quiet with nothing but the ticking of the grandfather clock and Roland's odd hiccups to meet his ears. He doesn't like it.

The living room looks exactly how he'd left it last night, except now there's an extra pile of presents he assumes are his own, brought from God knows where by his mom after he'd gone to bed. Everything is perfectly in place… Bar one parcel.

Roland lets go of his hand, shuffles over to the unwrapped gift and gently peels the paper back for Henry to see. Oh. Made a mess is probably an understatement.

The gift is an art set, something to go with the easel he helped bring down last night (the one that's hiding at the back of the tree under as much loose paper as they could find), only it seems opening the gift wrap wasn't enough to abate all the excitement, because Roland has clearly opened the paints too.

"Roland," Henry groans, stepping closer to examine the damage. It's… well. It's bad. A mix of thick acrylic paint soaking into his mom's Persian rug and why oh why couldn't this accident have happened two feet to the right? On the very easy to clean hardwood floor.

Henry stares for a moment, grimaces at the sight of the blue and red and green swirling together as a queasy feeling settles in his stomach and his mouth runs dry. He swallows hard. His mom is going to hit the roof.

Except he can't let that happen, not on Christmas day. Not on Roland's _first_ Christmas day. And not on the day his family is finally going to be all together and supposedly happy. Maybe he ought to creep upstairs and wake Robin, he'll know what to do.

And if he doesn't, he's a hell of a lot better at calming his mom down than Henry is.

But if he wakes Robin, Roland will still get into trouble for opening gifts without them in the first place (something Henry isn't really sure he can blame him for - you can't tell a five year old he's going to wake up to a load of free toys for the first time in his life and not expect him to try and sneak a peek when his parents aren't around. Kids in this realm have grown up knowing how Christmas feels. Roland has not).

He works his jaw back and forth for a moment, the cogs of his mind working overtime at what to do - isn't being helped with the little sniffles coming from behind him every now and again. It's still dark out, but the lamps in the front room stay on all night, and if he doesn't make any noise, he thinks he'll be able to root around in the kitchen for something to try and clean it up without his mom or Robin hearing.

He moves Roland back into the hall, plants him at the foot of the stairs and tells him he has to come and get him immediately if he hears anyone moving around upstairs, and then hurries into the kitchen. The clock on the cooker tells him it's 05:23AM, which means he has approximately a half an hour before he has to make sure he and Roland are both back in bed… and that's if he's lucky and his sister doesn't wake earlier than usual.

It's as he's carefully reaching into the cupboard under the sink that the worry really starts to sink into his stomach. He has no idea what to look for - all these cleaning products do different things, and one time in New York, Emma accidentally spilled bleach on her shirt and it went _orange._

What if he uses something that has bleach in it and it turns his mother's rug from the pale beige it usually is into something that looks like it's had Cheetos mashed into it?

He stands, bites the inside of his cheek before settling on paper towels. Yes. Get the excess paint up with the paper towels and then worry about the stain after. He swipes them from the side, hurries back into the lounge and drops to his knees at the sight of the incident.

He's careful, holds his breath as he blots at the paint, tries desperately not to push anymore of it into the carpet - the last thing he needs is an even _bigger_ stain to deal with.

"Can you fix it, Henry?" Roland asks suddenly, voice no longer a whisper and it makes Henry jump out of his skin.

He whirls around, finds his kid brother standing by his side and peering timidly over his shoulder. "Roland I told you to go keep watch," he grumbles. This is so not how he wanted to wake up when he went to bed last night, and a fleeting thought of, _this wouldn't even be happening if I'd just stayed at Emma's,_ flits through his mind.

"Do you think Daddy is going to yell at me? I bet Regina is," he says quietly, and it's the sorrow in his eyes that has Henry sighing, has him stopping from wiping the paint up and giving his brother's shoulder a nudge.

"Hey now, it's Christmas. And we can't be sad on Christmas, okay? I said I'd fix it and I will."

"Promise?"

It's not something he can do. Promise him. But for some reason the word "yes", tumbles out of Henry's mouth before he can even stop it, and Roland throws his arms around his neck.

"You're the best brother in the world, Henry," he tells him happily, voice suddenly void of the upset it's been laced with since they woke, and Henry can't help but chuckle.

"Go listen out for mom, okay?" And off the five-year-old trots.

His job of cleaning doesn't go… amazingly. He gets the paint up, stumbles on a bottle of something that says Resolve in big bold letters and sprays it on the big ugly blotch now sitting at the edge of his mom's Persian rug. It says to leave it to soak for ten minutes and then vacuum up. Well he _can't_ vacuum up, and he definitely doesn't have time to wait the full ten minutes, and when he blots the stain remover up (uses every last paper towel in the process) he's crestfallen to see it hasn't even budged a little bit.

He throws his eyes to the clock, sees it's now almost quarter to six and knows in his heart he isn't going to fix this. That he's going to break the first ever promise he's made to his new little brother, and the idea makes his heart feel like lead in his chest.

So he does the only thing he can think to do, and goes back into the hall with a smile on his face.

"All done!"

"It's fixed?" Roland asks, eyes lighting up like the lights on their mother's tree.

"Yep. Now go and get back in bed quick before mom wakes up! If she catches you down here she's gonna turn you into a toad."

His remark is met with a giggle, and Roland protests that he is _silly_ before hurrying up the stairs as quietly as he can. Henry watches him go, waits a second before creeping back into the lounge to carefully re-wrap the box of paints.

He knows it's not the brightest idea, and if it comes to it, he will tell his mother that _he_ woke up early and knocked over the paints - the very last thing he wants is Roland's memories of his first Christmas being tainted by his mother going into a rage because her rug is ruined. But he's only doing that if it comes to it. If he can get away with covering the stain with the parcel and feigning that it's clearly leaked whilst it was wrapped through no one's fault but the company's bad packaging, then he will.

It looks… messy. Nothing like the perfectly wrapped box his mom had placed here last night, but he can hear the odd creak upstairs now, and Henry knows he's just about run out of time. He covers the stain up, bolts back upstairs and sends silent prayers up to the heavens that everything will turn out alright.

-§-

"You guys are _very_ quiet considering it's Christmas morning," his mom says a little while later, as they're sitting down by the tree to begin opening presents. They're waiting on Robin to do Evie's bottle, and every second he takes is another bead of nervous sweat running down Henry's back.

"Just tired," Henry shrugs, throwing a glance to Roland, who looks between him and their mom and copies the exact gesture.

"Yeah. Just tired," he mimics.

Regina arches her eyebrow, bounces the baby on her lap a little before narrowing her eyes at Roland and saying, "Here was me thinking you'd be bouncing around the room because of all the presents Santa has left for you."

Another pang of nerves go off in Henry's chest. She's right, of course. Roland is fidgeting, itching to open his presents, but he didn't look at all surprised when they came downstairs all together. The kid only gasped after Robin questioned his lack of reaction. Like it was a total afterthought which, of course, it was. This is so _not_ going to go well.

Robin comes in a moment later, hands Regina the bottle who kisses the top of his sister's head before easing the milk into her mouth. Life (to Henry, anyway) seems a bit easier now she's a touch older. Now she can sit up and roll over, and won't scream at the top of her lungs if she isn't in either Robin or Regina's arms. His mom says they have to make the most of her while she's sitting still, that she'll be crawling before they know it and then the hard work really will begin, but then, he guesses he'll just have to wait and find that out firsthand.

Though how much harder can a baby be to look after if they're moving around a bit than if they're sitting still?

"Right then," Robin says as he sits next to the tree. "Let's get this day started, shall we?" He smiles at Regina, who nods at the very present Henry has been stressing over all morning.

"I think it's only fair we let Roland open one first," she says.

Robin nods, asks, "Is that alright with you, Henry?"

And _no_ it is _not_ alright if the present he's gonna reach for is the one he thinks he's going to reach for, but what else is he supposed to do other than nod happily? Like he isn't having an internal meltdown?

Robin leans over, watching his little boy (who seems to have completely forgotten that the present he's about to receive is the one he's already opened) bounce up and down with a beaming smile on his face.

"It seems you were a good boy for Santa this year, Roland," Robin tells him, lifting up the present and-

Nothing.

Henry's jaw drops.

The stain is gone. Not one speck of paint, not any ugly blotch ruining his mom's carpet, and for a moment he stares at the spot on the floor as if he's gone mad.

Did he dream it all? Has he actually just had the most realistic, most strange dream of his life and needn't have worried about the whole thing at all?

He frowns as Roland tears open the paper, squealing with joy at the sight of his paints. _My paints! My paints!_ He cries and way to be subtle, Henry thinks with a roll of his eyes. Roland isn't supposed to know he _had_ paints.

"You're not going crazy," his mom's voice whispers suddenly in his ear, and he snaps his head around to look at the knowing smile on her face.

"You… _you_ cleaned it up?"

His mom nods, chuckles before glancing back at Robin and Roland to make sure they're not listening. "I saw you and Roland trying to clean it up earlier when I came down to grab a pacifier for Evelyn."

"Mom, I'm really sorry-"

"Henry, you have nothing to apologise for. It was an accident, and you helped Roland out when you didn't have to. I'm very proud of you," she smiles, leaning in closer to kiss his cheek.

"I just… I thought you'd be mad and I didn't want him to be told off on his first Christmas, but, ah, I didn't do a very good job of cleaning it up," he says, wincing a little at the memory.

"No," his mom laughs. "You really didn't. But I very much appreciated the thought."

"But, how did you get the stain out?"

A glint appears in her eyes, and she scrunches her nose up before whispering that, "magic comes in handy every now and then. Merry Christmas sweetheart," and then she's turning away, laughing at Roland jumping around the room at the thrill of the whole morning.

Henry stares at her for a second before drawing his attention back to the presents, can't help but smile at the look on her face as she bounces the baby in her arms and beams at the two other guys in her life, and it occurs to Henry in that moment that maybe he's underestimated just how far she's come. How much lighter she seems in herself, less tightly wound maybe, and yeah sure, she still has her moments, but he knows if he rewound three years and replayed this morning's whole incident, her reaction would have been that of a different person. Suddenly Henry finds he doesn't care all that much about what presents he's got.

The gift he's staring at now is probably the best he's ever been given. Watching his mom bask in spending Christmas morning with a family she never thought she'd have, and filled with more love than she ever thought possible.

"Merry Christmas, Mom."


End file.
